December 14, 2020
Milliken & Company’s Chemical Division has joined the Digital Watermarks Project, a large-scale initiative testing the viability of digital watermarking technologies for the accurate sorting of plastics.
The Digital Watermarks Project was part of an initiative facilitated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, HolyGrail 1.0, which brought together brand owners, retailers, recyclers, packaging producers and sorting technology providers from across the plastics value chain to investigate ways to improve the sorting of post-consumer plastics.
Within HolyGrail 1.0, digital watermarks were found to be the most promising technology and a basic proof-of-concept for smart sorting was developed. HolyGrail 2.0, the second iteration facilitated by the European Brands Association (AIM), will take this initiative to the next stage by validating the concept and the technology on a semi-industrial scale.